Team Falken wins at King Of The Hammers’ Every Man Challenge

Falken Tire, continuing its immersion into the high performance off-road category, racked up another victory in the popular Ultra4 Racing King of the Hammers Smitty Built Every Man Challenge.
 
Partnered again with Savvy Off Road/Currie Engineering, the team took first place in the Stock Modified Class in the 2nd Annual event, organized as part of the KOH week-long race program.  Like the larger KOH event, the Every Man Challenge is open to both stock and modified 4X4 vehicles which compete on the same terrain as the Unlimited Class Ultra4 race cars. However, according to the rules, teams competing in either the Stock or Stock Modified classes must run stock, DOT-approve tires. Savvy Off Road ran Falken WildPeak A/T Tires, sized 37x12.50 R17 in repeating their victory of 2012.
 
Run every year in Johnson Valley, CA, the King of the Hammers course combines high speed desert racing with intense rock crawling to create an extreme racing event.  For 2013 a new, more difficult course was used.  Defending Every Man Champions John Currie and Gerald Lee were pushed to their limits.  With more than 100 vehicles starting the race, less than 10 would finish, yet, in a display of confidence, the Savvy/Currie team, which started 11th, took the race lead at the four-mile marker of the 105-mile race and never looked back. The team earned the victory with a time of five hours, 38 minutes; it would take another 30 minutes for the second place car to cross the line.

“Once more, the Falken WildPeak tire validated its durability and reliability through what many consider to be one of the toughest races on the planet,” stated Nick Fousekis, Falken Director of Motorsports and Customer Events.  “Our partnership with Savvy Off Road/Currie Engineering continues to pay huge dividends for our off-road efforts and substantiates WildPeak’s capabilities.”
 
The Savvy/Currie Jeep Wrangler team competed in the modified class, but the vehicle remained unchanged from 2012's stock class appearance with the exception of a new V8 LS3 engine, minor suspension upgrades and larger Falken WildPeak tires.
 
“Our Falken tires never let us down,” said Driver John Currie, co-owner of Currie Enterprises. “At key points on the course, we were able to hit speeds as high as 107 MPH and the tires were as stable as if we were on a newly paved road.”

Added Savvy Car Owner and Co-driver Gerald Lee, “We hit obstacles that were so hard we thought the tires would be damaged, but the WildPeaks prove tougher than we ever could have asked for.”
 
It’s a great partnership,” added an enthusiastic Nestor Cabrera, Team Falken’s Off-Road Supervisor.  “We look forward to many more victories.”
 
The inaugural Smitty Built Every Man Challenge, held last year, was created as a partner event to the well-attended King of Hammers (KOH) race, allowing off-road enthusiasts a chance to race their stock and modified stock vehicles during the dedicated one-day off-road race.